Emotions Flow As Eagle Flies

February 19, 1986|By John Husar, Outdoors writer.

An excited knot of 100 eagle-lovers recently gathered at Pere Marquette State Park near Grafton, Ill., to watch with mixed emotions the release of a bald eagle that nearly had died of a gunshot wound last month.

The bird was found in the Big River Forest near Keithsburg, Ill., with a .22-caliber bullet in its leg.

``I`m excited that he`s free, but I`m sad that he`s out there again where somebody can blow him all to pieces,`` said Richard Evans, a Granite City veterinarian who helped save the bird`s life.

He said three of four injured eagles brought to the Treehouse Wildlife Center in Brighton, Ill., in the last few years had been shot.

``I can`t tell you why people would do that,`` Evans said. ``It`s not that they don`t know what they`re shooting. They`re just idiots.``

-- Crab Orchard warning: The United States Fish and Wildlife Service lists Crab Orchard in Southern Illinois as one of 10 seriously polluted national refuges that require immediate clean-up. Some 74 other sites, including Wisconsin`s Horicon marsh, show modest contamination.

Crab Orchard`s problem is with PCBs, while Horicon suffers from agricultural drainoff. Michigan`s Shiawassee refuge also suffers from agricultural drainwater and municipal discharge. Crab Orchard, however, is one of the worst, lumped with California`s fearsome Kesterson refuge, where selenium poison from irrigation runoff has killed and deformed waterfowl in wholesale numbers.

The federal study found that 45 percent of the 84 affected refuges involved industrial or municipal pollution and 42 percent were related to agriculture.

-- Shiners dimmed: Wisconsin`s governor has vetoed a bill permitting farmers to shine and shoot deer that threaten their crops. The governor said the bill was unsafe, promoted bad relations between farmers and sportsmen and rekindled the Indian issue in northern Wisconsin. He pointed out that Indians might demand comparable privileges if some farmers are allowed to shine deer to control crop damage estimated at $40 million in that state.